26.29
When
the senate had finished making the appointments, the consuls were ordered
to ballot for their commands. Sicily and the fleet fell to Marcellus, Italy and
the campaign against Hannibal to Laevinus. This result utterly appalled the
Sicilians, to whom it seemed as though all the horrors of the capture of
Syracuse were to be repeated. They were standing in full view of the
consuls, waiting anxiously for the result of the balloting, and when they saw
how it was decided, they broke out into loud laments and cries of distress,
which drew the eyes of all upon them for the moment, and became the
subject of much comment afterwards. Clothing themselves in mourning garb
they visited the houses of the senators and assured each of them in turn that
if Marcellus went back to Sicily with the power and authority of a consul
they would every one of them abandon his city and quit the island for ever.
He had, they said, before shown himself vindictive and implacable towards
them; what would he do now, furious as he was at the Sicilians who had
come to Rome to complain of him? It would be better for the island to be
buried beneath the fires of Aetna or plunged in the depths of the sea than to
be given up to such an enemy to wreak his rage and vengeance on it. These
remonstrances of the Sicilians were made to individual nobles in their own
homes, and gave rise to lively discussions, in which sympathy with the
sufferers and hostile sentiments towards Marcellus were freely expressed. At
last they reached the senate. The consuls were requested to consult that
body as to the advisability of a rearrangement of the provinces. In addressing
the House Marcellus said that had the Sicilians been already admitted to an
audience he would have taken a different line, but as matters stood, he did
not wish it to be open to any one to say that they were afraid to lay their
complaints against the man in whose power they would shortly be placed. If,
therefore, it made no difference to his colleague he was prepared to
exchange provinces with him. He begged the senate not to make any order,
for since it would have been unfair to him for his colleague to have chosen
his province without recourse to the ballot, how much more unfair and even
humiliating to him would it be now to have the province which had fallen to
him formally transferred to his colleague! After indicating their wish, without
embodying it in a decree, the senate adjourned, and the consuls themselves
arranged to exchange provinces. Marcellus was being hurried on by his
destiny to meet Hannibal, in order that, as he was the first Roman general to
win the distinction of a successful action with him after so many disastrous
ones, so he would be the last to contribute to the Carthaginian's reputation
by his own fall, and that just at the time when the war was going most
favourably for the Romans.
